Free At Last by Ella Stone Page A

speechless. How was she going to explain this? And to a complete stranger. “Not really someone...more of a voice in my head.”
    “I didn’t mean anything by that, honey.” The woman ran her wrinkled hand down the smooth gleam of the surfboard’s outer lip. “Believe me, I talk to myself all the time.” She fixed a hard look on Susan. “Just be careful. Those voices in your head aren’t always yours.”
    Susan felt a queasy knot in her stomach. “What do you mean?” So many thoughts flooded her mind. Mental illness, radio waves, ghosts, the devil...
    “Just that sometimes the voices in our heads that judge us and tell us what we should be doing, they aren’t our voices at all.”
    “Whose are they then?” The devil, most assuredly. The thoughts that had been rushing through her head had to be planted by the devil.
    “Your mother’s.” The woman shrugged her shoulders. “All our mothers.”
    Susan smiled politely at the deranged old woman. The voice that was in her head, telling her to go get Kevin, that voice was clearly not her mother’s. Her mother would have an aneurysm if she even thought Susan wasn’t still a virgin.
    “I’m just going to go find my friend,” Susan said, turning to walk away.
    “If you’re looking for that tall drink of water with the great pecks and hazel eyes…”
    Susan stopped and turned in her tracks, suddenly very interested in what the old woman had to say.
    “He turned off that way.” She gestured with her thumb to behind where she was standing. “Headed up to The Virgin Drop on Twelve Apostles Lookout.”
    “The Virgin Drop?” Susan said dubiously, shielding her eyes with her hand as she peered up the jungle choked hillside.
    “Virgins go up there and are never seen again.” The woman wriggled her eyebrows. “They all come back women.”
    “Funny,” Susan said. “But how did Kevin get up there?”
    The woman gestured with her long, thin arm. “There’s a path, there. Leads up to where you want to go.” The woman’s eyes widened as she peered past Susan at the ocean. “Excuse me, dear, but my ride’s here.” She grabbed her board and started sprinting toward the surf, running into the water and diving onto the board heedlessly. A few strokes and she broke past the waves lapping at the beach and cut her way out to sea, where the waters were roiling, and Susan could see larger waves looming in the distance.
    She turned and looked to the hillside again, and had to really search to find the mouth of the trail. She had seen too many horror movies. It was never a good idea, under any circumstances, to go off into the woods--or a jungle--by yourself. In slasher flicks, it wasn’t a good move to enter a forest at all.
    But then that part of her that wanted her to go paragliding chimed in that at least if she was killed by a maniac, or savaged by a wild animal, she wouldn’t have to face Kevin. Wouldn’t have to apologize or get turned down again.
    But if she didn’t go she might never see him again, and that thought alone propelled her into the jungle and down the path leading to Kevin. She had to see him.

Chapter 6
     
     
     
    THE OLD SURFER CHICK was right. Standing looking over The Virgin Drop, the view was outstanding. The palm trees parted and gave a full panorama of the beach, the other hills and mountains, and far out into the blue ocean. Fragrant flowers swayed in the breeze, their scents both soothing and intoxicating. But no landscape was going to help Kevin sort out the jumble of thoughts quickly turning into a swamp crowding his head.
    What was Susan trying to do to him? Had she lost her goddamn mind?
    Or was she really interested in him that way, the way he’d always dreamed of?
    If so, what was the problem again?
    Kevin couldn’t pin down the problem, but he knew it was there, festering, waiting to kill him. He couldn’t have what he wanted, not when it came to Susan. The world didn’t work that way.
    If he slept with Susan, and Kevin